FRANCE: Little Pierre

A few tinkles of a silver bell called France's new National Assembly to order one day last week. But as the 600 men who would govern France fumbled to assemble a government, the center of interest was a man with a monkey wrench who wasn't there—Pierre Poujade, with his roughhouse protest movement, his 52 newly-elected Deputies and his 2,400,000 ballot-box followers.

Poujade's Deputies, no longer swaggering on the hustings, filed almost meekly into the strange surroundings of the Palais Bourbon. But the Poujadist symbol, an enameled red cock crowing, flared from every lapel. And the Poujadists quickly got involved in the Assembly's first dispute: an attempt to unseat four Poujadists on charges of electoral violations.

After being turned away from the Assembly proceedings for lack of a visitor's card, chunky young (35) Poujade blandly made his way into the Deputies' lounge, stepped up to the bar and ordered a glass of wine. At the other end of the bar, a knot of Socialists glowered at this invasion of a private precinct. One of them put down his glass and growled: "All right, Monsieur Poujade. Now, repeat that we are all rotten and bought up."

"Mais non," said Pierre Poujade, with a pained look, "we never said that."

"This isn't the circus," the Socialist said, pushing toward Poujade. "By what right are you here?"

Pierre Poujade downed his wine and quickly departed.

The One Idea. For the start at least, Rabble-Rouser Poujade had decided to work with more poise and less noise than marked his sudden metamorphosis from an obscure, small-town stationer who balked at his taxes into a magnetic force in French political life. Assembling his Deputies behind closed doors of a theater in Fontainebleau, Poujade reminded them of their pledge to follow his orders: "See, my boys. Now you listen to Little Pierre!" He decreed that all must hand over their Deputies' salaries (about $600 a month) to his "national treasury." He strongly advised them to hire professionals to run their butcher shops, groceries, bakeries and other businesses back home, so they can devote full time to politics.

But by the time Poujade finished fast-talking through his "program," Frenchmen had no better idea than before what positive proposals Poujade and his raffish anti movement hold out to France. His ideas all came back to one, insistently reiterated—a revival of the old States-General.